Anti-Shortage Citizen Monitor

The Mexican Constitution states that all Mexicans have the right to health protection. The Mexican legal framework establishes that everyone in the country has the right to access vaccines, medical supplies, and medicines whenever needed. Unfortunately, what is legally written is still often different from reality. In other words, what millions of people face every day to be healthy and treat or prevent diseases. 

The Mexican health system is complex. It is segmented across diverse public and private payers and providers. It is formed of three main subsystems - IMSS, ISSSTE, and INSABI- operating in parallel, each responsible for funding, service provision and, to a large extent, regulation.

Between 2018 and 2020, the Social Security System excluded more than 15 million people. The "lack of access to health" increased from 16% to 28% of the population, from 20.1 million to 35.7 million people without access to health services.

In 2021 we documented, in the Radiography of Shortage:  Health Transparency Report 2017-2021, that almost 24 million patients fail to obtain all prescription drugs in social security health services must buy them in private pharmacies, in markets or even not the following treatment, incurring out-of-pocket costs and denial to the right to health protection.

Our solution is made by tree pillars:

1. A citizen participation mechanism that allows public monitoring of effective access to medicines, supplies and health devices in an agile and simple way. This system can be accessed by a web app or by a Whats app chatbot.

2. This citizen monitor is linked to the health institutions that allows a timely response. Also we generate statistics that allow health decision makers to evaluate and plan  better policies.

3.- Communication campaigns on the rights of patients and mechanisms to guarantee them, in both rural and urban communities focusing on populations of greater risk or vulnerability.

We are all part of the health system. Mexican health service organizations are complex. But with tha citizen tool such as our solution we are contributing with realtime information to the decision makers and administrators in order to solve it as fast as possible.
If patients, health professionals and organizations are conscious of their rights and have the means to participate, it would be faster and easier to solve the shortage problems.
So far our solucion is having an impact on people that live with cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and mental health diseases.

We are a Collective driven by Nosotrxs, made up of 87 organizations of patients, health professionals and health activists. We promote collectively with patients, patients´ families, health professionals, academia, and governmental authorities to achieve effective access to vaccines, medical supplies and medicines to guarantee the human right: right to health. 

Our web app “cerodesabasto.org”, we have collected more than 9,500 drug shortage reports from patients and health professionals around the country. We published more than 9 documents that map and explain the shortage causes and trends, identify red spots and establish communication with authorities in the field to solve the problem. Furthermore, when a report has been registered on our web app, automatically, we have sent an alert to the authorities in charge of the supply of medicines, medical supplies and vaccines.

We are looking for Financial and technical support in order to grow our tool.
We are experiencing barriers mainly to access the more vulnerable regions of the country.

Our solution is Crowd Source and it involves health professionals, patients and patient organizations. It uses accessible technology to connect users with decision makers in order to solve specific shortage problems.

In México there are few social participation mechanisms in the health sector. This is one of them that is created and fed by citizens to collaborate with health authorities.

Our goal is clear. End with medicine shortage.
Next year we aim to replicate the national strategy with local groups in order to link the tool with local decision makers directly in hospitals and clinics where local organizations have a direct relationship.
In five years from now we hope to be a tool completely accepted and used by the diferente health systems in Mexico reaching most of Mexican territory.

We have direct and indirect indicators. Direct indicators are the number of reports from patients and health profesionales in our platform. The indirect indicators are the númer of unfulfilled prescriptions in each hospital/clinic, state and health institution.

We use a web application that helps the users find the health unit and the specific medication. We also work with a Whats app chatbot that helps users send their shortage reports.

Patientes, Health Profesionals and Patient Oganizations.

We have in Nosotrxs, an Equity and Inclusion policy that is our main frame. We work mainly remotely to make it easier for everyone.

Even though the operation team is small, we now work with more than 85 NGOs and patient grupos of a variety of diseases. Everyone is welcome.

We work mainly with NGOs and patient groups in a collective. We are divided in work groups depending on everyone's expertis.  

We provide information to our partners and they help spread the platform among their patients and in their social networks. We also do specific activities in different cities around the country with the help of our partners to promote the platform use.

When patients and health professionals make a report we send back information of the different services our partners can do to help them and they can see the trends on the reports by state, disease group and type of medical supply in our web app.
Our users report on our platform because they recognize that we are leaders on the topic and because we are sending this information to the health authorities on their state and health system.

Our business model is organizational support. We mainly run with Nosotrxs organizations support and the funding that we get help us expand our technological tools and with the promotion of our platform.

Most of our work is voluntary by our partners. So far we have received a grant from Fundación Open Society (120k USD) that helped us develop the whatsapp chatbot and we start with conversations with local organizations to expand our operation.